Let's see those modifiers and what they actually do!

Ok, so I've been trying to get a little more serious with my modifiers and figure out what effects they each impart to the pic. This little exercise helped. Alot. So I have more playing to do. I also need a light meter to get more exact readouts so I can quit winging it every time.

This is my 12 year old who actually tolerates my camera/lighting antics, mainly because I think she's pretty interested in all this herself. Main light here is a 580ex2 into a Softliter2 (with the silver disc in place), high cam right. You can see how dark the shadow is on the right side of her face.


Next, I put up both a white piece of foamcore as a reflector on her right side. You can see how much the shadow is lightened on the her right side.

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Next, I added a 430ex exactly opposite of the softliter. I snooted it to control the flare, and pointed it at her for a rim light. It also brought out her hair as well. And finally you can see the set up shot. You'll notice that I've also put a large 46" sunfire reflector over the foamcore. I was trying to see what/how much difference that made. To my untrained eyes...not that much. I'm sure the pros/advanced amateurs see it right away, but I'm not there yet.

I triggered the 2 strobes with an ST-E2 on cam.

Any suggestions on what light meter I should get? Looking at the Sekonic L358. Also looking at the Elinchrom BXRi250 studio strobes (x2) so I can start working with the modeling lights, etc. Next up, a soft box or 2 but at this point I really just want to learn how to use the modifiers I have first.

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That shows how effective a hair light is! Nice work

I like this.... great idea for a thread. I just got a 580ex2 along with my 430ex2 and I am lost as the best way to use them. Thanks for the pull back.

I'd lie to see the hair light up a bit, lighting the top of her head a bit more. Good thread.

Good examples... very effective way of showcasing each tool.

Very nice. What was the power setting on 580EX and 430EX?

Good thread. Informative. No lightmeter suggestions.
bc

cameraman51 wrote in post #7981428
I'd lie to see the hair light up a bit, lighting the top of her head a bit more. Good thread.

Yup, me too. I had actually meant for this to act as a rim light just on her arm/shoulder area but it picked up her hair enough to pull it out of the black bg. I'll try to shoot again later with a hair light aimed specifically at her melon.

SYS wrote in post #7981456
Very nice. What was the power setting on 580EX and 430EX?

I'm not sure. I've been shooting the strobist route (and could have told you then) w/ cybersync triggers and setting each strobe manually up until lately. I just got the ST-E2 about a month ago so I've been playing with that more. I bumped the FEC by 2 stops (because you lose a stop or 2 in the softliter), and had the ratio on the ST-E2 set to 8:1 since the 430 with the snoot was bare and I just wanted it for a rim light.

Got ahold of some black velvet background, big enough for some head/shoulders shots today.

Camera settings were ISO 800, F/11, 1/250, flash WB.

My canon 580exII was camera left, aboiut 75 degrees, a few inches above eye level, about 2 feet from subject position. Manual flash settings, 14mm (diffuser down) 1/8 (-.3) power. Flash triggered via Cactus v4.

Here is the resulting self-portraits, and the modifier(s) used.

Shoot-through umbrella:

did you set her pose or did she naturally take that position? it works very well for her

Interesting tutorial

A: I wonder how the hair rim light would look like if shot from the back (slightly to the left).

B: I wonder what it would look like if the 580 was used with a shoot-thru umbrella causing light spills and if that would help light up the shadows on her left side.

Nice examples. The precision of the placement of the hairlight would benefit if there was a constant source output (incandescent modelling light) to let you see its placement effect immediately...your blindly positioned hairlight, while providing some benefit for revealing the hair against the black background, falls onto your daughter's right side of her face and illuminates it -- which a hair light should not do...illuminating skin!

The series demonstrates the most significant flaw to learning lighting with the Strobist approach (speedlights), and the reliance on trial and error setup.

BluewookieJim wrote in post #7987836
Got ahold of some black velvet background, big enough for some head/shoulders shots today.

Camera settings were ISO 800, F/11, 1/250, flash WB.

My canon 580exII was camera left, aboiut 75 degrees, a few inches above eye level, about 2 feet from subject position. Manual flash settings, 14mm (diffuser down) 1/8 (-.3) power. Flash triggered via Cactus v4.

Here is the resulting self-portraits, and the modifier(s) used.

Shoot-through umbrella:

Bare Flash:

1/4 Honl Speedgrid:

1/8 Honl Speedgrid:

BluewookieJim - you can absolutely see how the shoot-thru brolly softens the light compared to the bare flash. It looks to me like the 1/8 Speedgrid has a faster fall off of the light, mostly on your face, when compared to the 1/4? Nice examples!

c2thew wrote in post #7988619
did you set her pose or did she naturally take that position? it works very well for her

c2thew - I'd like to claim that I posed her that well but I had nothing to do with it. She just sits/stands and starts posing kinda naturally.

ebann wrote in post #7989663
Interesting tutorial

A: I wonder how the hair rim light would look like if shot from the back (slightly to the left).

B: I wonder what it would look like if the 580 was used with a shoot-thru umbrella causing light spills and if that would help light up the shadows on her left side.

ebann - here is another example of trying (somewhat successfully) to place the hairlight with a little better precision. It's not great, but it was placed higher than her head and angled down as in your suggestion. To Wilt's point, he's right of course. I just blindly placed it behind her, kind of eyeballing where I thought it would "show", and snooted it to control the flare coming back toward the camera. Clearly it lit the right side of her face as well. To paraphrase what McNally says in his book Hotshoe Diaries, when you set one of these suckers off, light goes everywhere.

If you look at BluewookieJim's example with the shoot-thru brolly, you can see that even with the spill it doesn't lighten up the other side of his face.

Wilt wrote in post #7990436
Nice examples. The precision of the placement of the hairlight would benefit if there was a constant source output (incandescent modelling light) to let you see its placement effect immediately...your blindly positioned hairlight, while providing some benefit for revealing the hair against the black background, falls onto your daughter's right side of her face and illuminates it -- which a hair light should not do...illuminating skin!

The series demonstrates the most significant flaw to learning lighting with the Strobist approach (speedlights), and the reliance on trial and error setup.

Wilt - Right on! That's why I'm looking at getting a light meter and a couple of studio strobes (w/ modeling lights of course) so I can learn to light in a more classical way. I really like the Strobist sight, and I think I can safely say that David Hobie made me want to learn to use OCF to make my pictures more interesting. Having said that, I shoot every week, but not every day. So my best pics that are lit with OCF tend to be "happy accidents" or required me to shoot 60-80 pics to get 1 or 2 or 3 that I really like. My goal for this summer is to get a couple of studio strobes and a light meter and attend a lighting workshop taught by a pro.

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Very instructive. I just got my first external flash (580ex II), and have been reading up on all this world of strobist. Looks like I will need it for weddings & enhancing other shooting events.
You had the 580 shooting into the unbrella on her left, the reflector on her right side, but I got a little confused at to where you placed the 430. I couldn't see it on the pull-back picture. Could you fill me in on that in more detail?
I like this thread.